Value co-creation intention, practices and experience in self-service technologies

Galdolage, Badra Sandamali

Abstract

The 21st century is known as the experience economy where the prime aim of businesses is to provide superior customer experiences, mainly through actively seeking mutually beneficial interactions with customers which is often labelled as ‘value co-creation’. Co- creation indicates a collaborative perspective of value creation and changes the roles of the organisation into ‘value facilitators’, and customers’ from passive to active as ‘co- creators’. Extant research suggests that businesses which acknowledge this new collective practice achieve greater organisational performance. However, success is not always guaranteed in co-creation; it is an ever-present possibility that a sub optimal implementation may result in value ‘co-destruction’ which causes to diminish wellbeing of the participants.

Advances in technologies have presented many opportunities for both organisations and customers to access a multitude of technological interfaces, prompting organisations to explore how self-service technologies (SSTs) can be effectively used in value creation. Despite these advances in SSTs, scholarly work in value co-creation context is largely limited to exploring interpersonal interactions in traditional physical interfaces. To the best of the researcher’s understanding, no studies examine how customers co-create value (value co-creation practices) in SSTs. An inquiry as to whether customers would like to co-create value in SSTs (co-creation intention), what customers do while co-creating value (value co-creation practices) and how they experience their collaboration (co- creation experience) in SST is therefore important.

Mixed methodology is adopted, based on the sequential exploratory strategy, where a qualitative study is followed by a quantitative study, such that the findings of the qualitative study are instrumental in designing the quantitative study. The ‘practice theory’ is used as the theoretical foundation in understanding customer value co-creation practices and ‘total customer experience’ is used in understanding customer co-creation experiences.

The qualitative study explores eight determinants of co-creation intention and sixteen customer value co-creation practices which are re-classified into five groups of practices (5Cs): co-learning, co-producing, co-operating, connecting and correcting. There is also evidence on the duality of these practices resulting in co-creation and co-destruction, and interconnectivity among practices.

Following a confirmatory approach in the quantitative phase, a high level of customer value co-creation intention in SSTs is recognised. ‘Technology know-how’ is found to be the strongest predictor of co-creation intention while performance, information richness and situational factors show significant direct effects. ‘Convenience’ is significant with the moderating effect of age, such that the effect is stronger for young people and ‘social influence’ is significant with the moderating effect of gender with a negative effect on males and a positive effect on females. Customer value co-creation intention shows a strong significant positive effect on co-creation practices and weak significant negative effect on value co-destruction. ‘Past experience’ displays a significant positive effect on co-creation practices and significant negative effect on co-destruction. Customer value co-creation practices show a significant positive effect on customers’ functional and emotional experiences, while co-destruction reveals a negative effect on emotional experiences, and surprisingly a positive effect on functional experiences. Finally, a significant positive effect of functional experiences is found on emotional experiences.

This study adds new knowledge to marketing theory by revealing customer value co- creation practices in SSTs for the first time. It also makes some incremental contributions enriching the literature in the well-established fields of value co-creation, self-service technology and customer experience. Finally, the study develops a comprehensive conceptual model expounding co-creation intention, practices and experiences in self- service technologies, which can be extended to any technologically supported services, providing an element of scientific utility in the study. This understanding will benefit service providers in devising value enhancing self-service technological interfaces from both strategic and operational perspectives by ensuring superior customer experiences and ultimately accomplishing competitive advantages.

Citation

Galdolage, B. S. (2021). Value co-creation intention, practices and experience in self-service technologies. (Thesis). University of Hull. Retrieved from https://hull-repository.worktribe.com/output/4223196

• Thesis Type: Thesis
• Deposit Date: Jul 5, 2021
• Publicly Available Date: Feb 23, 2023
• Keywords: Business
• Public URL: https://hull-repository.worktribe.com/output/4223196
• Additional Information: Business School, The University of Hull
• Award Date: Jan 1, 2021